


Support

by xtricks



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-29
Updated: 2012-01-29
Packaged: 2017-10-30 07:59:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/329566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xtricks/pseuds/xtricks





	Support

Outside, water ran down the sole window in Ianto's flat like quicksilver – like alien blood. Like common water. It was only to be expected, day in, day out; rain was inevitable during fall and winter, this was Wales after all, and dreariness was the only constant. Ianto took slow swallow of his mediocre whisky. Halfway through the bottle now, he hardly tasted it. He hadn't felt the grey misery of winter before tonight - infatuation and regular sex does wonders for the endorphin system. Now though, the night was a crushing weight and Ianto could hardly move under it.

He'd left his sometime lover alone with his tears and come home - and home was a bitter word now - to drink. There was little he could imagine doing to help a lover who was weeping because of a woman who was in love with another man. Ianto wasn't sure where he even fit in the whole situation and trying to parse it only made him realize that maybe he _didn't._

Which wasn't a bad thing, necessarily.

Ianto understood himself. He knew his place and he relished it. He was the one who made perfect coffee for Owen and Gwen, Jack and Toshiko, as if the right combination of tropical beans and hot water would protect them from all they faced. He ordered pizza, toilet paper and plankton. He swept the floor and made corpses conveniently disappear. He knew the location of every piece of alien technology in the Hub - including the ones the team sometimes smuggled out. He knew the names of every Torchwood member who had ever been. He knew _everything._ He was _support_ staff.

He was no hero - certainly no larger than life figure like Jack Harkness, team leader (except when he abandoned them), sometime lover (though that term didn’t always apply) and possible alien (who seemed to love, live, cry and laugh with deeper humanity than many Ianto had met). Ianto wasn't even adequate field staff; he didn't have sufficient initiative or passion for danger (let alone the wardrobe). It hadn't been too long ago that he’d been lying on the floor with a stinking sack over his head sure he was going to die of fear before the villagers even got around to chopping him into meat pies.

The front lines didn’t suit him, Ianto realized, pressing the cool rim of the glass against his lip and he didn’t just mean standing with a gun to the back of his head as a hostage while a vivisected alien thrashed around twenty feet away. He was on the front lines with Jack and Gwen and he didn’t want to be there. Jack loved Gwen, he loved everyone on the team, Ianto knew, but he _loved_ Gwen. It left Ianto rather at a loss.

Should he play the jealous lover and try to _claim_ Jack (he couldn’t imagine it). Should he clear the way, make Rhys disappear with a dose of retcon and a new identity somewhere in Ireland (it was certainly within his skill set and not the first time he’d reconstructed an inconvenient witness)? Jack would comfort Gwen, grieve with her (Ianto had seen Jack crying as Gwen screamed over Rhys’ corpse in that day that had never happened), and affairs of the heart could take their course. It would break Gwen’s heart. Cold as Ianto knew he could be he didn’t think he could do it. He’d met Gwen’s eyes when she’d stepped out of the shadows, dropping her gun, and he’d recognized the look. He’d seen it himself, in a hundred mirrors, during the long year Lisa had lain hidden within Torchwood-three. That kind of love killed. In fact, it had nearly killed Rhys just this afternoon.

The simplest thing, of course, was the path of least resistance. Let things continue on as they were, remain in the background (it was certainly a familiar position) while Jack and Gwen and Rhys danced around the unspoken anger and love and fear lying beneath the surface. It was the kind of thing – so intense – that Ianto knew it wouldn’t last forever. One way or another, the situation would be resolve and, if they were all lucky, it wouldn’t include gun use or betrayal (something Ianto couldn’t claim). He should just make coffee and … wait.

Except he didn’t want to.

Ianto tossed back the last whisky in his glass, the poured another. His hand was still, mostly, steady; he was Welsh, he knew how to drink.

Ianto knew his place, he was support staff. But that was his _job._ He didn’t want it to be his _life._


End file.
